


the stars and she who runs with them

by alovelylight



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, Miranda Barlow Appreciation, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 13:13:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13482204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alovelylight/pseuds/alovelylight
Summary: When she declared Peter Ashe a traitor, her heart beating fury into the expanse of her body, she knew this was what James felt like. The constructed castles of civilization falling to the ground, dragons from the dark breathing out and destroying all the lies they hold dear. This was what she wanted; this would be her peace.





	the stars and she who runs with them

When they took away her home, they didn’t take away her dignity, her light, her eyes. When James would fall, fall from the sun of his fury and his blindness, she was there to mop up his blood. When James would curse at the world, she’d quietly instruct the stars not to shine their cold lights on her. 

On the good days, they were a hearth of warm fire, laughing and reminiscing over old books and well-thumbed poetry. The love in James’ eyes and the curve of his grin brought Thomas back to them, just for a bit—then the gravity of his ghost would fall like an executioner’s axe, and the lightness in the room would collapse.

So they continued on their ten years’ trudge, picking at scars and making a home for them. She mopped and dusted, tried to convince herself that there was strength in the motions.

#

He was handsome, handsome in the way people who were meant for great things tended to be. Thomas said that the moon came from him. She didn’t understand, having thought him a scorching, brilliant sun; only after they became lovers did she know. 

James McGraw was understated power, brimming with an innate sense of order. He grounded Thomas to the earth and elevated her to the sky. 

Back in London, they were all lovers, protected by the bounds of their home _ — _ their inner world. She knew how to love with words and books, with honesty and wonder. James and Thomas loved with dangerous hope and defiance. On some days, she wanted to hate them for their brazen bravery, but she could never. She would never.

She was a woman made whole by her own power, her own acts of defiance that spat into civilization’s eyes. She had looked into the world and saw no reason why it should be held from her because of its prejudices; and so she went, self on her sleeve, rising to her fullest self amidst the enlightened circles of salons and in the arms of forbidden lovers.

Propriety be damned. 

While she heard of stories of women who were punished for their beauty and power—Helen of Troy forever tarnished in history; Lilith a villain for her seduction; Medusa a monster for straying onto a god’s path—she never truly believed them, in her heart of hearts. 

Her downfall from London wasn’t a direct result of her own fire, but the story of it was. Let them use the women distorted by the narratives of civilization to paint the world with silence and shame. Let them point their fingers at her and say,  _ See. See what being a woman who wants too much gets you.  _

She knew better. 

#

The road to Charles Town was paved with changing tides. James, whose tune of hope she was singing along to for the first time; Abigail, whose eyes contained all the wisdom of the world at sixteen. She breathed the freedom of the sea and envied James for having all of this, this band of brothers and this gape of mobility. 

Abigail was like the old Peter in her kind consideration of the unknown. Miranda watched the girl from the corner of her eyes as she wrote pages and pages of thoughts, curious to know what she was thinking—this girl who was raised and learned in civilization, but possessed with such an armor of truth as to not bleed out.

She and James felt Thomas around them, so clearly in the veil of hope. They clung onto each other in his name, frayed edges a part of something bigger, and she knew that she would never allow herself to be driven inland again. 

When she declared Peter Ashe a traitor, her heart beating fury into the expanse of her body, she knew this was what James felt like. The constructed castles of civilization falling to the ground, dragons from the dark breathing out and destroying all the lies they hold dear. This was what she wanted; this would be her peace.

#

In the end, she was a dragon, wings flapping to escape the captivity of a cruel narrative. In the end, she was mother. After all this time, all the years of cursing and forgiving, of soothing and braving, she recognized McGraw beneath the cage of Flint. She was good at that: her eyes, always hers and always true, saw the light.  
  



End file.
